There are in existence a large number of electrically operated breast pumps, allowing a user, e.g. a mother, to pump milk from her breast. Various pumping mechanisms have been proposed for drawing milk from the mother's breast, including, for example, ones disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,045,529 and 6,355,012 issued to Nüesch. Such mechanisms are generally speaking rather complicated, and thus costly to manufacture. In addition, most such mechanisms include gear trains which would generate much noise, especially when the motor is operating at a relatively high speed.
In addition, although a user may, with some existing breast pumps, be able to adjust the pumping cycles, e.g. by varying the number of suction cycles per minute, or adjusting the vacuum level for pumping milk from the user's breast, it is up to the user to decide whether to make such variation or adjustment, and the user may simply have no information on which to decide whether the current pumping rate is suitable or not. In this connection, U.S. Pat. No. 6,547,756 issued to Greter et al. discloses a programmable breast pump which may be programmed to generate a number of different milk expression (extraction) sequences, or curves. In this arrangement, a motorized pump is provided with a microprocessor-based controller. Cards, with microprocessor “chips”, containing instructions for different suction curves are also included, which may be inserted into the breast pump, so that the instructions in the cards may be read and acted upon by the breast pump. However, as in the case of other adjustable breast pumps discussed above, it is still up to a user to decide whether to change the mode of pumping operation of the breast pump, and a user may not know whether an alternative, and if so which, suction curve should be applied. A further shortcoming associated with conventional electric breast pumps is that the user is provided with no information as to the time required to fill up the milk receptacle, e.g. bottle.
Such and other shortcomings discussed above are also present in breast pumps disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,036 issued to Britto and U.S. Pat. No. 6,090,065 issued to Giles.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide an electric breast pump in which the aforesaid shortcomings are mitigated or at least to provide a useful alternative to the public.